Janet felt the pathos of this appeal go to the bottom of her heart. She did not know what to say to comfort him, and she could not keep her own eyes from straying after Charlie, who after all had been very kind, who had gone away at her prayer like the most complete of gentlemen. She was very thankful to be released, yet her eyes followed him with something like pride in his docility, and in the vigour and strength and magnanimity of her first lover. Though she was much afraid of him, Janet forgave him kindly as soon as he was gone. The tears came into her eyes for Tom’s distress, while yet, with a thought for the other, she watched him with a corner of her eye over Tom’s bowed head. He turned round and took off his hat to her before he disappeared under the low arch, and Janet, in politeness and regret, made the faintest little bow and gave him a last glance. This made her pause before she answered Tom. ‘It’s all Beau’s fault,’ said Tom, as if he had been talking of stolen apples. ‘She would never have been any wiser, nor mother either, if it hadn’t been for Beau with his confounded law. And I don’t believe it now,’ he said; ‘I won’t believe it. Think, Jan--to be married and done for, and no way of getting out of it, before you are twenty-one!’ ‘But wasn’t it--your own doing, Tom?’ Then Tom got up and gave vent to a great moral aphorism. ‘There is nothing in this world your own doing,’ he said; ‘you’re put up to it, or you’re led into it, and one tells you one thing and another another. But when you’ve been and done it after what’s been told you, and every one has had a hand in it to lead you on, then they all turn round upon you, and you have to bear it by yourself. And everybody says it’s your own doing. And neither the law nor your friends will help you. And you’re just ruined and done for--before you ever had begun at all.’ ‘Oh Tom,’ cried Janet, ‘come home--and perhaps it will not turn out so bad after all.’ ‘It can’t turn out anything but bad--and I’ll just go and drown myself and be done with it all.’ ‘Oh Tom, Tom!’ He got up from her with his hands deep in his pockets and his gloomy head bent. ‘Leave alone,’ he said, pushing her away with his shoulder as in the old nursery days. ‘Where’s dinner? But I’ll dine at the club, you can tell Beau, if they’ll have me there.’ CHAPTER XVI